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Below are the instructions
for the process I used to create the Debian DVD ISO's, this is as a
guide for those who are looking at doing similar things:
1. Download the
required ISO files from your local FTP (I used my ISP's FTP as it was
free quota on my Internet account, which helped as it was over 8GB
of downloads in total), or the original CDs if you have the CD media.
2. Combine the files
from the ISO's / CD's into a directory on your system (combining the
appropriate package directory's etc as required). This is where the
main trouble is, you have to make sure that you have all the required
files and in the required directories.
In order to get
my Debian 3.0 r2 ("Woody") i386 Binary DVD to work flawlessly, I had
to completely scrap the "dists"
directory and download the latest complete directory from the Netspace
FTP, once I worked this out it was smooth sailing (Mind you this was
at least 15-20 ISO compiles later, oh well).
3. Modify any files
you want (e.g. Edit readme files, add package updates and add boot
images etc).
4. Recreate the
appropriate md5sums files for the discs you are creating (e.g. I used
MD5 Summer as unfortunately I developed these DVD's on my Windows XP
machine, as it was the only one available in the limited time I had
available). This is a good idea especially if you are distributing
the ISO, that way when people burn it they can check the files on the
DVD to make sure non are corrupt.
5. Create the ISO,
to do this use MKISOFS, you can download it from just about anywhere
(do a Google search). This is
the command I used to create the ISO
mkisofs -o debian-woody-30r2-i386-binary-dvd.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size
4 -boot-info-table -R
-m TRANS.TBL -J -T
Well not the complete
command, I added other information like preparer, publisher, volume
id etc (But I am not giving all my secrets away here, so you will just
have to read up on the options of MKISOFS).
6. Burn the ISO
using your favourite burning application (e.g. cdrecord for Linux or
Nero for Windows).
7. Test the ISO
from boot to the end of the install to make sure it all works as planned.
If not then go back to steps 2/3 and work out where the problem lies.
This is where the greatest amount of time is needed, so it might help
to use a program such as VMWare to emulate a test machine to speed
the test process up as much as possible.
So there you go,
takes a bit of playing around, but in the end its pretty straight forward.
If you wanted to create your own custom CDs the method would be fairly
similar to the above steps.
If you have any
questions or comments, please email mayhem (at) linuxathome.net |
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